Starring-Shahrukh Khan
Directed by-Shimit Amin
Produced By-Yash Raj Films
Normally I wouldnt go to a Yash Raj production unless dragged by several tractors and stuff, but Chak De India is a movie that I had on my must see list from a long time ago. The basic premise of SRK doing a Denzel Washington (Remember the Titans)/Al Pacino (Any Given Sunday) type of role and being in a YR film without ham-acting seemed interesting. Also the director's last offering (Ab tak Chhappan) is one of my favourite movies.
The movie begins with the final moments of an Indo-Pak match of the 'World Championship' (not the world cup), with captain Kabir Khan (Shahrukh Khan) playing center forward for his team. He gets tripped by a Pakistani player inside the penalty region and India gets a penalty shot. Kabir Khan takes the shot himself and misses, going over the Goal post and India end up losing the match.
After the match images of Kabir Khan shaking hands with the opposing captain and his team mates are used to portray him as a match-fixer. He gets tainted by the media and the people who lose faith in him quickly (Aaj Tak plays the media channel in the movie, I wonder whether they were being honest or did they know that they were spoofing themselves). He has to leave his ancestral home and live away from public view for the next seven years.
The Indian Women's Hockey federation is shown discussing the fate of the team which has been already selected from the various state quotas but the members of the board show their skepticism by saying that the national team doesnt even deserve to play against a school team from a foreign country. Kabir Khan says he will do the job, knowing that no one else will do it. His brief is to get India to win the woman's world cup.
The team pours in from all the different states with each of the girls having a different story of their own. Memorable members of the team are the girl from Haryana, the girl from Chandigarh, the former captain and the Punjabi girl.
The rest of the film unfolds in a true underdog story style. And although somewhat cliched, it is good to watch.
Shahrukh Khan plays an understated role, Shimit Amin's last film had Nana Patekar in the lead and he managed to get Nana Patekar to act without his usual histronics, he does the same for SRK, this is a non-SRK type role that he has played after a long time.
The camera-work and screenplay are all well matched to the film, and with the big pockets of the production banner, the money has been used liberally and (contrary to most Yash Raj films) this does not look over-produced.
(Thankfully, the movie was not shot in NY or London with SRK being the coach of an NRI-woman's hockey team, although I am sure the idea might have crossed Adi Chopra's mind.)
Pablo's Pop Culture references/recommendations-
Movies
Any Given Sunday
Remember the titans
Hip Hip Hurray (starring Kirti Azad and Shafi Inamdar, a good soccer film about a school team and it's sports teacher)
Books
The Bleachers-John Grisham (possibly the shortest novel written by Grisham and one of his few non-law books, about a small town school American football coach on the verge of his death and the ex-players coming to visit him one last time.)
Friday, August 10, 2007
Monday, August 6, 2007
Elvis and a Bass Guitar
Friday evening can be too taxing if you pretend that you do not have much to do, and shove away all the academic backlog that has built itself over the two and more years that you have spent in college. So I suggested to AD, "Let's go out man."
Asking AD out is easy, he never says no, so he said, "Okay lets go and get the bass fixed."
The bass in question was/is an old relic that he has sort of inherited from a senior since he left it in the college as the plug-in socket was kaput. In the summer holidays AD had got the guitar and pick-ups etc fixed but the old deaf and blind mechanic that he had employed for the job had used a socket much akin to his age as such that a lead for it could not be found anywhere in the world.
We borrowed Divij's bike and head out towards Assi, the place where there was the promise of music shops. The music shops guided us to Agarwal radio which was supposed to be quite the hot spot.
With each destination my chagrin increased cause I can do nought but ride pillion, and I was holding the bass, which is quite heavy. And quite awkward to hold too, again because it is quite heavy.
Agarwal radio turned out to be a portal in another world, it had a dim lighted room with a very low hung ceiling and radio and machine parts that were stacked up closely near the wall. We showed them the bass and they refused to either recognise it or be any part of it.
Instead the man sitting behind the counter and scribbling in a yellowing notebook pointed towards a small door in the wall opposite to him. Inside was another man wiping seat off his brow and working with a rusty screw driver. We ventured to enter the room when the man spoke (and before that you would not have thought him capable of speech) and said that he was not referring to that room, he was gesturing towards the shop across the street which was also named rather unimaginatively Agarwal radio.
The clerks mistook the bass for some sort of a gun or something and backed off as soon as we entered the shop, they listened as AD and self spoke simultaneously about our base predicament and they too said that they were unable (and somewhat unwilling) to help us.
They directed us towards Awaz radio which they said was a certainty for fixing the bass, and all the other problems a man could face. We expected to find a magician sitting behind a desk of old wood with a black coloured table fan on it, instead we found a somewhat less congested shop with no magician and certainly no one to fic the bass.
Although the shopkeeper had tried to mislead us by displaying a poster of a girl in a red mini skirt holding a guitar, he said he did not deal with guitars at all.
We went back to Agarwal Radio once again and bought a socket from them, they said we had to go to Bass-fatak to get the bass fixed.
(Bass-fatak for the uninitiated is a part of Godowlia, which is a region in Benares that has been in a permanent state of traffic jam ever since man invented the wheel. Navigation in Godowlia and regions near-by is tough, especially when one has to compete with man, beast and beastly men)
We made a rather electrifying entry into the bass fatak region with several transformers exploding behind us. With the bass in my hand, we almost made a perfect glam rock band at that instant (long live KISS),
When the transformers finished their exploding bits, the area was awashed with darkness. And the bass guitar found its saviour (as predicted a bit earlier) behind a creaky wooden table with a fan. There was no electricity so we waited in the dark with the bass in the corner waiting for the light to shine.
The bass-man fixed it up for us using borrowed electricity from someone's inverter, and we headed back to the hostel..
And to conclude this long and largely pointless exercise in writing, while returning to the hostel on the way near Assi I saw a board which said
----------Elvis Guest House---
The King lives!!!
Asking AD out is easy, he never says no, so he said, "Okay lets go and get the bass fixed."
The bass in question was/is an old relic that he has sort of inherited from a senior since he left it in the college as the plug-in socket was kaput. In the summer holidays AD had got the guitar and pick-ups etc fixed but the old deaf and blind mechanic that he had employed for the job had used a socket much akin to his age as such that a lead for it could not be found anywhere in the world.
We borrowed Divij's bike and head out towards Assi, the place where there was the promise of music shops. The music shops guided us to Agarwal radio which was supposed to be quite the hot spot.
With each destination my chagrin increased cause I can do nought but ride pillion, and I was holding the bass, which is quite heavy. And quite awkward to hold too, again because it is quite heavy.
Agarwal radio turned out to be a portal in another world, it had a dim lighted room with a very low hung ceiling and radio and machine parts that were stacked up closely near the wall. We showed them the bass and they refused to either recognise it or be any part of it.
Instead the man sitting behind the counter and scribbling in a yellowing notebook pointed towards a small door in the wall opposite to him. Inside was another man wiping seat off his brow and working with a rusty screw driver. We ventured to enter the room when the man spoke (and before that you would not have thought him capable of speech) and said that he was not referring to that room, he was gesturing towards the shop across the street which was also named rather unimaginatively Agarwal radio.
The clerks mistook the bass for some sort of a gun or something and backed off as soon as we entered the shop, they listened as AD and self spoke simultaneously about our base predicament and they too said that they were unable (and somewhat unwilling) to help us.
They directed us towards Awaz radio which they said was a certainty for fixing the bass, and all the other problems a man could face. We expected to find a magician sitting behind a desk of old wood with a black coloured table fan on it, instead we found a somewhat less congested shop with no magician and certainly no one to fic the bass.
Although the shopkeeper had tried to mislead us by displaying a poster of a girl in a red mini skirt holding a guitar, he said he did not deal with guitars at all.
We went back to Agarwal Radio once again and bought a socket from them, they said we had to go to Bass-fatak to get the bass fixed.
(Bass-fatak for the uninitiated is a part of Godowlia, which is a region in Benares that has been in a permanent state of traffic jam ever since man invented the wheel. Navigation in Godowlia and regions near-by is tough, especially when one has to compete with man, beast and beastly men)
We made a rather electrifying entry into the bass fatak region with several transformers exploding behind us. With the bass in my hand, we almost made a perfect glam rock band at that instant (long live KISS),
When the transformers finished their exploding bits, the area was awashed with darkness. And the bass guitar found its saviour (as predicted a bit earlier) behind a creaky wooden table with a fan. There was no electricity so we waited in the dark with the bass in the corner waiting for the light to shine.
The bass-man fixed it up for us using borrowed electricity from someone's inverter, and we headed back to the hostel..
And to conclude this long and largely pointless exercise in writing, while returning to the hostel on the way near Assi I saw a board which said
----------Elvis Guest House---
The King lives!!!
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